


doing and saying things altogether unexpected

by bluebeholder



Category: The Hobbit - All Media Types
Genre: BAMF Bilbo Baggins, Canon - Book & Movie Combination, Feelings Realization, Hugs, Light Angst, M/M, Mirkwood, POV Multiple, Thorin Broods
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-06
Updated: 2019-01-06
Packaged: 2019-10-05 14:44:10
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,105
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17326946
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bluebeholder/pseuds/bluebeholder
Summary: In the cells of the Elvenking's palace, Thorin and Bilbo grow much closer, and Bilbo realizes some feelings he hasn't thought about before.





	doing and saying things altogether unexpected

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Pyxyl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pyxyl/gifts).



> Hi, Hobbit fandom! I've been a longtime lurker around these parts, but was finally nudged into writing something of my own. Thus, Bagginshield ensues! :D
> 
> This fic is technically canon-compliant, but plays fast and loose with Desolation of Smaug timeline. It’s estimated by many that, in the book, the Company was in Mirkwood for about seven weeks. By my own estimation, they were lost in the woods proper for about a week and a half—and then spent five and a half in the Elvenking’s prison before Bilbo’s great escape. "Book and Movie Combination" up there is really just a tag for the timeline and for the construction of the prison, with Thorin...a long way away from everyone else.
> 
> If you're not into international relations and political science, feel free to skip the end note. It's me rattling on about those things. :)

Thorin sits in silence.

He listens to the sounds of the prison around him, to the noises of what now passes for his life. It is an Elvish prison, and so lacking the dripping of cave water: instead, there is the pleasant sound of a fountain. No squeaking rats here, but rather the softly melodious chirping of cave crickets. The light is not of flickering torches, but from glowing orbs set into sconces, which dim and light again at regular intervals. The guards do not tramp about—nor do they even often come by—and when they do, they walk with the silent Elvish tread that Thorin so detests.

They do not often come because he is in the deepest cell in the prison of the Elvenking, beyond the reach of friends, sunlight, or hope.

He has counted the days, for there is little else to do. They were by his estimation lost in the wood for a little more than a week when the spiders took them, and he has certainly been in this cell for another six days. For the first two days he paced. He roared curses at the elves who came to bring him food, refused food or drink, and shook the bars of the cell. On the end of the third day he had been brought before the Elvenking again, hungry, exhausted, and clinging to the last scraps of his rage and dignity.

The Elvenking laughed at him.

For three days now, Thorin has sat in silence.

Mirkwood, with its spiders and dream-filled waters and impenetrable darkness, is preferable to this torment, Thorin decides. He looks around the confines of the small cell—barely large enough to take five steps along each wall—and shakes his head. If they are trying to drive him mad with boredom, that will not work; if they are trying to kill him with loneliness, well, Thorin has been lonely enough before. He is not afraid for his Company. If this is how they treat the leader of the Company, then his men will be more than well cared for.

His only concern now is for Bilbo.

Thorin finds himself dwelling, not on the Lonely Mountain and the distant Quest before them, but on the past. On the sunny days before Mirkwood, the final days of summer when they’d walked beneath the friendlier trees, and the midsummer days before that when they had climbed down from the Carrock full of hope, and…

_That_ Thorin does not dwell upon. It wouldn’t do, not now. Not when, for all he knows, Bilbo is wrapped in silk in a spider’s web and sucked dry, or hopelessly lost in a forest filled with evil creatures.

Instead, Thorin thinks of Bilbo’s better qualities, things Thorin had only come to appreciate after Bilbo saved his life. Of his subtle sarcasm, humor which many of Thorin’s men seem to miss, but which Thorin has always found appealing. Of his sudden enthusiasm for pastimes like swordplay or raucous singing. Of his determination to, at last, to become a true part of the Company.

And as night draws near, tonight, after the elves have brought a meal which Thorin can barely pick at, Thorin thinks of other things. Of Bilbo’s soft hands, increasingly callused and worn with travel, a change which both pleases and saddens Thorin. He thinks of Bilbo’s fussy habits with a great deal of fondness, of his insistence on using a proper napkin at meals and of his recently-acquired habit of hurling balled-up handkerchiefs at dwarves who refuse to use them. Of Bilbo’s eyes, puzzled and determined and alight with fervor by turns. Of his unrestrained smile, given often to people who please him…and more and more often, to Thorin.

Thorin sighs heavily and puts his head back against the cold stone wall of the cell. “Where are you, Bilbo,” he mutters.

There’s a cough at the cell door and Thorin jerks. It can’t be…

He turns and his heart nearly stops.

“At your service,” Bilbo says with a bow, and a wry, worn, wonderful smile.

Thorin hardly breathes and he’s up, across the cell and at the bars, hands wrapped around them, staring down at Bilbo. He’s struck speechless, able only to stare. And stare.

Bilbo is battered and worn. There’s a nasty scratch over one cheek, and he’s got dark circles under his eyes. His knuckles are bruised, and there are cuts and scratches on his ankles where he must have run through brambles. His clothes are torn at the edges, but surprisingly clean, and though his backpack is missing his sword is still belted on his hip.

“You look better than I expected,” Bilbo says.

“And you look worse,” Thorin returns frankly. “Bilbo—how did you get away?”

Bilbo sighs. “Do you mind if I sit down? I’ve had an extremely long week.”

“Yes,” Thorin says, “sit—”

They face each other through the cell bars. They’re plenty wide enough for a dwarvish hand to reach through; more than wide enough for Bilbo’s whole arm. Thorin gladly gives Bilbo all his untouched food; Bilbo eats ravenously, talking between bites and sometimes through them. It’s elvish food, delicate but filling, and still Bilbo eats down to the crumbs.

“I,” he says, popping a bite of some soft bread in his mouth, “have been starving. Living off table scraps, can you believe it! Well, I suppose you can, you’re in prison…anyway.”

“What happened to you?”

With a shrug, Bilbo explains. “I got in about the same time you did, but the elves didn’t find me. I stayed very well hidden and watched them march you all off to the cells. Found the rest of the Company somewhere upstairs. And I’m sorry it’s taken me so long to find you, Thorin, but the deeper you go in the palace the more guards there are and the more risk there is of getting caught, so I had to learn all the schedules and memorize their routes…”

“There is no need to apologize,” Thorin interrupts, aware that his voice is rough and a little harsh, but hoping the feelings come through all right.

Bilbo stops in surprise. “Why ever not? You’ve been alone down here for _six days_ , by all accounts, you must have been going mad from worry!”

“That doesn’t matter,” Thorin says. He resists the urge to reach through the bars and drag Bilbo into a hug. “I would rather you be free and alive than taken prisoner while looking for me.”

“Well,” Bilbo says quietly, “I’d rather have found you and risk being a prisoner than not know if you’re alive or dead.”

There’s a long pause, broken only by the crickets.

Finally, Thorin relaxes a bit and shakes his head. He lets go of the bars and lets his hands fall into his lap. “It seems we’ve been thinking the same way,” he says. “I thought you were dead or lost to us forever in the woods.”

“Now we know we’re both alive,” Bilbo says. He smiles, weary but bright. “That gives me a great deal of hope! Perhaps there’s a way out of this after all.”

 

***

 

Bilbo hurries off after his talk with Thorin. His heart is singing like it hasn’t in, it seems, an age. He can’t remember being so joyful. It very nearly makes him incautious, but he’s too well-used to hiding and scuttling about in shadows to break his habits for happiness. Now more than ever, Bilbo must stay safe and unnoticed. It’s the only way that Thorin will be all right.

He wears the ring until he’s back in the main hall of the prison. Like the prison where Thorin is kept, it’s an alarmingly pleasant place. There are ferns and moss growing in a great soft bank along a falling, babbling brook; the stone is smooth and the floors are clean. The hall is nearly vertical, cells aligned with a descending flight of stairs. The steps are meant for elvish feet and not for a hobbit’s, and despite all the walking and exercise he’s done over the course of the Quest Bilbo is still panting by the time he reaches the cell where Balin is being held.

The lights are dim, and so Balin never notices that Bilbo took off a ring, rather than merely stepping from a shadow. “Balin!” Bilbo hisses. He’s quiet, so as not to wake the others: though he trusts them all with his life, he does not entirely trust them to keep this great news secret.

The old dwarf turns and rushes to the bars. “Bilbo! What news have you?”

Bilbo can’t restrain a smile. “I found Thorin,” he says.

“I will never cease to be amazed at the cleverness of hobbits,” Balin says. He reaches for Bilbo’s hand and Bilbo clasps it tightly. “Where is he?”

“In the deepest parts of the palace,” Bilbo says. “Almost in the wine cellars. He’s well—he’s been bandaged up and fed, and looks none the worse for wear.”

Balin sighs and rubs his forehead with relief. “I cannot imagine what we would have done if you had not found him,” he says. “Now that we know where he is—have you any plan of escape?”

“Well, actually,” Bilbo says, “no. I haven’t.”

“You are the only one who can find our way out,” Balin says, “if there is a way out to be found.”

With a cheerfulness he doesn’t really feel, Bilbo smiles. “I’m certain there is,” he says. “We’ve managed to get out of much tighter scrapes than this!”

But as the days pass, and as time rolls into first one week, then two, Bilbo’s hope begins to dwindle. He’s been roaming the Elvenking’s halls for nearly three weeks now, living on table scraps and sleeping in snatches wherever he can. Wearing the ring for too long, though it keeps him safe, makes him feel irritable, paranoid, and anxious. As a result of wearing it for hours every day, it feels as if there’s never a moment when Bilbo isn’t irritable, paranoid, and anxious.  

He looks for ways and means of getting out of the prison. Through the great gate? Through the back door? Out through the roof and into the trees? Through a secret tunnel he stumbles upon in the bowels of the palace? But the great gate is always guarded; the back door leads right back into a spider-infested forest; the dwarves cannot climb; there are horrid little beasts with teeth and sharp talons lurking in the tunnel. None of those avenues will work.

And even should he find a way out, Bilbo has no way to get the dwarves from their cells. He knows the rotation of watches well by now, and could easily lead all thirteen dwarves straight to an exit at any time of day or night without being caught. But no matter how he strives, he cannot manage to get the keys to the cells. On the sole opportunity he has to snatch the keys from a lackadaisical guard, he finds to his dismay that not one of the keys will fit Thorin’s cell.

The dwarves, as a rule, hold faith with him. Balin is Bilbo’s special confidant, offering wisdom and counsel on how to keep his sanity intact. Bofur offers stories and jokes and games of riddles, taking Bilbo’s mind from the task at hand with humor and a smile. Nori offers a great deal of professional advice; if anyone else could manage a jailbreak, it would be that dwarf. Ori has somehow managed to convince the elves to allow him to pass the time by knitting, and gives Bilbo a present one day of a small knitted pocket handkerchief, which Bilbo treasures. Once, when guards unexpectedly come into the prison while Bilbo is out in the open, Dwalin and Dori start a fight to give Bilbo time to escape, sustaining black eyes cheerfully on Bilbo’s behalf.

But, by the end of the third week, it’s not with the Company that Bilbo spends most of his limited leisure time. With increasing regularity, Bilbo visits the deep prison, where he sits with Thorin.

On the surface Bilbo tells himself it’s to keep up the king’s hopes, to alleviate some of the crushing loneliness down here in the silent parts of the palace. Underneath, though, Bilbo is quite aware that he’s doing it for his own loneliness. The Company, love them though Bilbo does, is always full of questions about when they’ll get out, what Bilbo’s current plan is, and so on. Balin avoids such things, but it was Balin who shooed Bilbo off after Thorin one evening.

“He will need you,” Balin said firmly. “We up here have each other, but Thorin has only you!”

So off Bilbo went, and hasn’t looked back since.

When his daily routine is done—checking in on guards, eavesdropping on news of the outside world, stealing a crust of bread, making another round of the palace to see if the window in the library might provide exit—Bilbo first goes to speak to the Company. There he reassures them that all is well, gives what little news passes through the palace, and promises to return tomorrow. Then, as the lights dim throughout the palace, Bilbo makes his way down to the deep prison where Thorin is kept.

He’s stopped denying that his heart leaps every time he sees Thorin, and that it pounds like a rabbit’s when Thorin bolts to his feet and rushes to the bars of the cell, and that it finally calms from the day’s anxiety when they sit down on opposite sides of the bars to talk. And they do talk—about anything and everything, about the Shire and Erebor and the Blue Mountains, about Thorin’s family and Bilbo’s family, about gardens and mines, until their voices run dry.

In all of this, Bilbo sees no point in denying any longer that Thorin’s smile calls an answering one to his face, a smile that Bilbo hasn’t really worn since he last saw the sunshine.

At the middle of the fourth week in the palace, Bilbo feels he’s going a little mad. “There’s something _itching_ at me, Thorin,” he complains, chin on hand and elbow on knee, glaring at the wall. “As if I’m missing something obvious that might help us out of here…”

“Bilbo,” Thorin says, in the measured, deep voice that is rapidly becoming the anchor to Bilbo’s whole sense of sanity, “for just one night, will you stop thinking about escape?”

For a moment, it feels as if the world has been upended.

“What did you say?”

 

***

 

It is strangely liberating for Thorin to say again, “Will you stop thinking about escape?”

Bilbo stares at him like he’s grown a second head. “Have they replaced you with someone else?”

“No,” Thorin says. Even now, stripped of everything he has, he’s not entirely sure how to express himself properly. He pauses, taking a measure of Bilbo as he thinks on it.

He hadn’t noticed until now how _thin_ the hobbit has become. He’s not eating as much as the dwarves, though Thorin always saves something for him; besides, all his running about and climbing of stairs is making him lean. The dark circles are nearly painted on under his eyes. Though by his own admittance Bilbo does his level best to bathe periodically in one of the many streams and pools in the palace, the hair on his head and his feet is tangled from a lack of care. He looks like he’s passed beyond exhaustion, into something wholly worse.

“Well?” Bilbo asks, after a long pause. “Explain yourself, Thorin Oakenshield. I haven’t come on this whole quest, run from goblins, hidden from elves, fought spiders, gotten used as a troll’s handkerchief, and saved your life just to give up now!”

“I am not asking you to give up,” Thorin says, alarmed. He shakes his head. “I’m asking you to rest. You are exhausted.”

At his words, Bilbo looks, if possible, even more tired. “I’ve nowhere _to_ rest,” he says. He shrugs, that wry what-can-you-do smile on his face again. “I can’t leave the ring—er, I have no good way to hide overnight while I sleep, and there’s no nook in this palace where I can catch more than a catnap. Some of the fern banks are quite cozy, I’ll admit, but stone is very cold.”

“Sleep here,” Thorin says, before his mind catches up to his mouth. When it does catch up, Thorin finds to his surprise that for once they are in wholehearted agreement.

Bilbo leans back, taking Thorin in with a speculative gaze. “Here?”

“I can keep watch for you,” Thorin says, the idea taking real shape in his mind. “I have blankets and a pillow. It’s no trouble if you sleep on them there. I can wake you, if someone comes unexpectedly.”

“No one ever comes until daylight anyway,” Bilbo says, casting a glance at the narrow spiral flight of stairs leading up. “I suppose, if you don’t mind…”

“I have nothing to do but sleep the rest of the time in here,” Thorin says. He gestures around at the cell. “What else am I to do, play draughts with myself?”

It’s a weak jest, but Bilbo laughs. “Perhaps you can play conkers with the wall,” he says.

“You still,” Thorin says, turning to the bed and pulling off the blanket, “have not explained to me what a conker _is_.”

“You,” Bilbo counters, taking the blanket from him and laying it out neatly on the floor, “have not asked me about it.”

Thorin passes him the second blanket, much thinner than the first. “I’m asking you now, Master Baggins,” he says.

Bilbo turns a gimlet eye upon him even as he neatly turns down the blanket. “If I explain, you must play me, which I don’t recommend as I am the Shire champion three years running.”

“I accept your challenge,” Thorin says with dignity, handing Bilbo the thin pillow. “Now, explain.”

With absurd pomposity, Bilbo puts the pillow down at the “head” of the bed and plumps it. “It’s a game of chestnuts,” he says. He takes off his jacket with great care and folds it neatly, setting it by his side, with his sword and sword-belt on top. “You take a chestnut and put a hole through it, and tie it on a string. Then you swing it against someone else’s conker until theirs breaks.”

“It certainly sounds like a game of merit. One which very young dwarves might enjoy.”

“There is no hobbit in the Shire, or anywhere for that matter, who does not take pride in their skill at conkers,” Bilbo declares. “There are methods of improving, of course; an amateur player may put chips in their conker while making the hole for the string, and that will break it. You can harden a conker for a long while. I may even have some still waiting at home, by the time I return they’ll be champions…”

Thorin smiles. Bilbo, under the blanket now, is rapidly falling asleep. “When we return you home to the Shire, I shall play you,” he promises.

Bilbo blinks at him. “It almost sounds like you’re planning to go back with me, _King_ Thorin,” he says, drowsily.

“Perhaps I will,” Thorin says, and something in his voice makes Bilbo smile. A mere moment later, the hobbit is out, sound asleep with his back pressed against the bars of the cell. Thorin watches Bilbo for a moment, and then an alarming thought crosses his mind.

Is Thorin planning to go back to the Shire?

No. No, under no circumstances, not even these dire ones, can Thorin countenance such thoughts. This Quest—his return to Erebor—the saving of his people—cannot be stayed by feelings like these. Feelings that arise watching this brave, exhausted hobbit sleep, somehow secure in the belief that Thorin can protect him even from behind prison bars.

Thorin settles in for his vigil, watching the stairs, listening for the soft tread of the elves. He will not fail Bilbo. He cannot, not when…

Well.

To say it out loud would be to make it real. And real feelings like this will cast doubts that Thorin cannot afford. He must hold fast to his purpose. Now he has been found by hope, by a friend. Soon enough, he will see the sunshine again, because Bilbo Baggins is a force to be reckoned with, and Thorin trusts him completely.

 

***

 

Overnight, Bilbo becomes used to sleeping beside the bars of Thorin’s cell. He feels safe there, for reasons he can’t—won’t—define. He merely accepts the feeling of safety and gladly takes advantage of the warmth and comfort and friendship. After all, this is a better bed than any he’s had since he went running out of Bag End all those months ago. The blankets are soft, if thin, and they smell like Thorin.

He must leave quickly each morning, as the lights of the prison rise again. There’s no time to dawdle, barely enough time for Bilbo to wish Thorin _good morning_ and Thorin to wish Bilbo _good luck_. Bedclothes are stuffed unceremoniously back through the bars and off Bilbo goes, back about his business, energized by a real night’s rest.

A true plan has begun to form, as the middle of the fifth week in the palace approaches. Bilbo has spent far too much time lurking in a nook in the dining hall, listening to mealtime conversation among the elves. It’s high up, out of sight of any casual looker, with plenty of handholds by which to climb to it. Up there, Bilbo can safely take the ring off and listen.

It is here that he first hears of Galion the butler and his drinking habits, and of the way that many of the high officials of the palace appreciate an evening in the wine cellar after dinner. The Dorwinion wine served in the palace makes even the elves sleepy, it seems, and it occurs to Bilbo that if he times things just right, he might well have discovered an avenue of escape.

At the end of the day, Bilbo reports back to Balin. “I might have found something real,” he says.

“Do tell,” Balin says.

“There does seem to be a blind spot in the Elvenking’s all-seeing gaze,” Bilbo says. “His butler is rather too fond of Dorwinion wine, which, when imbibed to excess…”

Balin’s eyes light up. “My word! You believe there’s a way out past him?”

“I haven’t studied the wine cellars much yet,” Bilbo admits. He shrugs, unable to shake off the good cheer. “But I can do that, and rather quickly since no one guards them. It will take some doing—and finding out who has the key to Thorin’s cell!”

“I have full confidence in you, Bilbo,” Balin says solemnly. He looks down the row of cells. “So do we all. The whole Company is behind you now.”

“Well, thank you,” Bilbo says. He lifts his chin a little with pride: how hard-won this has been!

Balin smiles at him. “You’d best go and tell Thorin.”

“Shouldn’t I stay to talk to the rest of the Company?” Bilbo asks. “I mean…”

“Laddie, you run right off to our king every night with barely a _good night_ for any of us here,” Balin says. His eyes positively twinkle. “I daresay you and Thorin are growing rather fond of each other. Who would have ever guessed?”

With a shake of his head, Bilbo dismisses the thought. “No more than I am fond of anyone else in the Company.”

At that, Balin laughs, rich and deep. “Ah, so you’d spend every night sleeping beside the bars of Dwalin’s cell if you had the chance? _Fond_ may not be word enough for you and Thorin, Bilbo!”

Bilbo takes a deep breath to protest, then closes his mouth. He opens his mouth again, then snaps it shut. He turns on his heel without another word and rushes off, ears burning. Behind him, Dwalin is objecting loudly to his brother’s insult while the Company laughs.

Has it been so obvious to them all? Is Bilbo’s mind so easy to guess? He nearly trips going down the stairs to Thorin’s cell, he’s so lost in thought.

“Careful,” Thorin says, rising to his feet and giving Bilbo that brilliant sunlight smile, “or you’ll break your leg, and then where will we be?”

“Stuck in prison forever, I shouldn’t wonder,” Bilbo says, recovering himself a little. He comes up to the door, right up to the bars, and looks up at Thorin. “After all, I may have found us a way out.”

There’s a heartbeat’s pause. By the look on his face it seems that Thorin is rushing through the whole spectrum of all emotions that may be felt by anyone, man or elf or hobbit or dwarf. At last he says, in a hoarse voice, “Are you certain, Bilbo?”

“Quite certain,” Bilbo says. “The wine cellars may be open to— _oof_!”

He’s cut off by Thorin’s arms being thrown around him.

A series of inane thoughts flashes through Bilbo’s head. Thorin is warm. The bars are digging into their chests. This is the _second_ time Thorin has hugged him unprompted. He must have done something very exceptional for this. Thorin is very warm.

At some point in this muddle of thought, Bilbo managed to get his arms as far as they would go around Thorin’s shoulders. Now he simply stands there, pressed against the cell bars that almost feel like they’ve vanished between him and Thorin.

“I never doubted you,” Thorin says.

“I…know you didn’t,” Bilbo says.

Thorin doesn’t let go. It should be an uncomfortably long embrace, but instead Bilbo finds himself relaxing, putting his forehead against Thorin’s shoulder. For a very long moment, or a series of moments, they simply stand together like this.

Finally, Thorin leans back, though his hands never leave Bilbo’s shoulders. He’s looking at Bilbo the same way he looked at him on the Carrock. Something is strange about his blue eyes, and for a moment Bilbo is very, very lost in them. “I cannot thank you enough for your courage.”

“Well, this hug has certainly been a start,” Bilbo says, suddenly nervous. He smiles through it. “I don’t need thanks, not from you.”

“When we have left this place behind, you’ll have saved me three times,” Thorin says.

Bilbo furrows his brow, giving Thorin a look. “From Azog, from the prison, and…I can’t remember a third time. Have you gone off in the head from being down here after all?”

Thorin is unfazed by the comment. “You saved me from my own despair,” he says. “And that is a debt I can never repay.”

“Already done,” Bilbo says. His mouth is moving before his mind catches up, but when his mind catches up he’s surprised to find himself in full agreement. “You saved me from the same fate.”

Something clicks into place in Bilbo’s mind and he freezes in place, feeling like a rabbit before a hound. Thorin stops, too, and for all the world the great dwarf looks frightened. They’re simply staring at each other.

Bilbo thinks back on the last four-and-a-half weeks here. On this moment, that hug, sleeping beside Thorin’s cell, cracking small jokes together and talking long into the night, and at the beginning, desperately searching for Thorin and nearly forgetting the rest of the Company altogether. Further back—to their growing friendship on the journey to Mirkwood and the way that Thorin kept _looking_ at him throughout, asking for his advice and seeking out his company. And the incident atop the Carrock, the moment when something odd began welling up inside Bilbo, something he’d never felt before.

And even before that, his determination to show Thorin what he was made of, and his admiration of the dwarf’s courage and leadership and compassion for his men, and the attraction of his personality, and…everything about Thorin, actually. Bilbo has always been drawn to Thorin. It’s only now, out of sight of other eyes and momentarily safe from danger, that Bilbo can put a name to the feeling.

Love.

He, Bilbo Baggins, has gone and fallen in love with Thorin Oakenshield.

 

***

 

Thorin sees it happen, the moment that Bilbo realizes what Thorin feels for him.

In an instant, Bilbo’s eyes grow very wide. His brows rise almost comically, then he furrows them, and then they relax. He taps his foot on the stone floor and one hand slides into his pocket.

At that moment, Thorin expects Bilbo to step away. Not leap away, no, a Baggins is too respectable to _leap_ from something unexpected; but he expects the talk to turn, politely, to weather that neither of them can see. That will be an end to whatever this might have been.

Instead, Bilbo steps forward, and hugs Thorin again.

This is precisely the moment that Thorin realizes that everything he feels is reciprocated.

Were it not for the bars between them, Thorin might have crushed Bilbo. As it is, he has to hear Bilbo wheeze slightly in trying to breathe before he loosens his hold. When he does, and Bilbo steps back, a part of Thorin is still convinced that this is the end.

But Bilbo does not let go of Thorin’s hand.

“If it’s all the same to you,” Bilbo says, with the kind of blunt cheerfulness he always uses when trying to avoid addressing the mûmak in the room, “I’d like to sleep rather closer to the door tonight.”

It takes a moment for that statement to sink in. When it does, Thorin cannot help but smile at Bilbo. “Of course,” he says.

They don’t speak of it. Thorin suspects it’s not because they’re men of few words—neither of them is devoid of language, or the desire to speak of their feelings. Rather, if Bilbo is anything like Thorin, which he is, he will be loath to admit to anything that could get in the way of the Quest. Thorin still can’t let himself put a name to his feelings; he won’t dare speak of them aloud.

Yet there’s nothing that stops Bilbo from falling asleep pressed against Thorin, through the bars of the cell. There’s nothing that stops Thorin from holding Bilbo’s hand.

And in the morning, before Bilbo returns to the palace and finding their method of escape, there’s nothing that stops them saying _good morning_ and _good luck_ with a kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Most fun research done during this: fact-checking myself that Thorin would not be worried about the treatment of the Company. You see, the modern assumption is that, though participants in criminal acts may all find themselves penalized, only _those most responsible_ see punishment to the full extent of the law. The prime examples: at the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda and the International Criminal Tribunal for Yugoslavia (ICTR and ICTY, respectively) only those most responsible for war crimes were brought before the tribunals. 
> 
> But this is all very modern, and not necessarily representative of the medieval situation. Middle Earth is a rough ( _very_ rough) medieval analogue, something extremely far removed from our modern conceptions of justice in wartime. There exists a great deal of discussion about the ransom of captured nobility, with very little in popular culture about the treatment of captured foot soldiers. 
> 
> So the question I asked: could Thorin trust that the elves, despite the mutual animosity, would not have harmed the rest of the Company?
> 
> The answer is, surprisingly, yes. 
> 
> In the Western world, on which Tolkien based Middle Earth, there have always been social and legal constraints on what you can do with people taken prisoner during times of war. As a general rule, humans don’t actually enjoy massacring other people! Shocking, I know. There have always been exceptions, of course, but over the course of the Middle Ages the norms of war underwent a _drastic_ change. 
> 
> As activities of war increasingly divorced themselves from the Church and became a more professional activity, there were ever more constraints. Economics really got into the mix of things and the “top brass” recognized that foot soldiers of all stripes were much more valuable alive than dead. They could be conscripted (obviously not applicable here) or, more likely as time went on, subjected to a complex scheme of ransom that would be enough to refund some of the costs of the war. People were increasingly likely to not only survive a conflict, but to be treated well afterwards. 
> 
> In a nutshell, although Thorin could expect that a ransom for his person would be much higher than the average member of the Company, he can also expect that everyone else is fine. 
> 
> “Mûmak” is the singular of “mûmakil”—the elephants of Middle Earth.


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